


Sanitation

by Esmethewitch



Series: Numbered Catches [2]
Category: Catch-22 - Joseph Heller, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Absurdist Humor, Calculating Finn (Star Wars), Class Differences, Crossover, Explanation of tags in Author's Note, Finn is SO DONE, Finn is ex-PFC Wintergreen, Gen, Minor Character Death, Mitaka is Yossarian, Poor Dopheld Mitaka, War is hell, background kylux, background stormpilot, mention of sexual abuse, poor Finn, unrequited Hitaka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 08:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20468306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: Finn gets demoted to Sanitation again, and gossips with Lieutenant Mitaka.





	Sanitation

Hours before Mitaka’s tense meeting with General Hux (an endeavor that proved fruitless save for one brandy), he ran into ex-Corporal FN-2187 in the hallway. The stormtrooper had a mop and bucket, and was industriously swabbing the already-gleaming floors with soapy water. He’d been busted down to Sanitation again.

“Lieutenant Mitaka!”, he exclaimed from behind the mask, “Good to see you. What brings you here today? Mind how you go, I haven’t dried this bit.”

Mitaka smiled. It always made him a bit uneasy that he couldn’t see the other man’s facial expressions. However, he knew that the Stormtroopers suffered enough in their impractical uniforms, so he always made a point to be polite to them. “I’m going to pick up some files from Datoo, then I’ll see if I can work up the balls to give Hux my medbay eval forms. I have notes from my therapist and a psychiatrist. Those have to count for something, right?”

FN-2187 shrugged, an impressive feat given his restrictive armor. “Hux ignores regulations when they’re inconvenient for him. I’d give you maybe two chances in ten of getting a week off, if I had to guess.”

Mitaka’s face fell. FN-2187 was a canny observer of the higher echelons of the First Order, besides having a considerable streak of luck. He made a tidy sum of credits after trying to settle the question of whether Hux and the Force-bogeyman Kylo Ren were fucking each other between shifts with a betting pool. As it happened they were; FN-2187 didn’t even have to sneak around to gather evidence. He’d simply stood in front of his superior officers and recorded Hux screaming: “If this is how you’re going to behave, Ren, you’ll count yourself lucky if you even get any next month!” and Kylo Ren’s sulky reply: “I’m sorry for throwing you into the soda machine, okay? I said I was sorry. I am sorry. Can we have make-up sex now?” He sprinted away before either man could notice him and shoot him or wipe his mind.

However, all First Order personnel were effectively stranded aboard the _Finalizer_. Nobody who sold anything worth buying would trade with them, and it was next to impossible to buy anything over the holonet unless you plied a quartermaster with favors. All FN-2187 retained from his victory were bragging rights. After Mitaka heard this recording, his heart broke a little. Not enough to make him fall out of love with Hux (It was a very timid kind of love; most certainly unrequited but always unspoken. Possibly, Mitaka’s attachment stemmed from the storm-chasing craze of his youth. He loved to see things blow over and collapse, but from a safe distance away.), but enough to make him slightly resent FN-2187 for bringing this evidence to light. __

FN-2187 was a puzzle of a man. He had a personality, which was unusual for a stormtrooper. To watch him practice shooting was akin to witnessing some sort of modern dance performance, a beautiful and incomprehensible pattern of stillness and motion. This perfection never carried over to the battlefield. His white-gauntleted hands would shake, and once he shot his entire charge into an abandoned bantha-drawn wagon. When Captain Phasma dressed him down after that battle and asked him what he had to say for himself, he said: “The wagon was ugly. I did everyone a favor by getting rid of it. And ma’am, I didn’t break regulations. I shot all the charge in my blaster.” Phasma leaned over him and was just about to order his execution when Colonel Datoo stopped her.

Datoo pointed out that the insurgents they were supposed to be subduing didn’t ambush them like they thought they would, but instead they were distracted by the sight of a stormtrooper running circles around a wagon, pumping it full of blaster-fire, and screaming: “Take that, you scrap-pile! I stubbed my toe on you! You’re the worst thing on this Force-forsaken planet! May your chassis collapse and your wheels fall off.” Datoo recommended FN-2187 for a medal, and failing that, a promotion. Hux agreed that FN-2187’s initiative deserved to be rewarded, and so FN-2187 was made a Corporal.

He was always getting promoted and subsequently demoted. When he made it as far as Sergeant once, he’d joked that at this rate he could become an ex-General.

“That would be nice,” he’d confided to Mitaka. “I could say I really used to be somebody who moved in all the best circles.”

Mitaka sighed. FN-2187’s lack of dismay about his demotions to Sanitation was unsettling. He knew that stormtroopers could get sent to Reconditioning for too many demerits in conduct, but somehow FN-2187 never worried about that. Somehow, nobody ever sent him to Reconditioning. “You don’t want to actually move in all the best circles?”, he’d asked.

“Nah. Actually, I don’t want to be anywhere near the bridge, if I can avoid it. That Kylo Ren is a walking Health and Safety hazard. And if it’s not Darth Crylo taking out his feelings on the consoles and you poor bastards in bridge crew, the Resistance will blast everything to hell. I _like_ Sanitation. I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. Everything always needs to be cleaned.”

As they stood there, a squadron of troopers came in from an away mission on a planet, tracking gobs of smelly purple mud all over FN-2187’s formerly pristine floors. “Every time you clean something, somebody else gets it dirty all over again. Doesn’t that bother you?”

FN-2187 shook his helmeted head. “No. It’s kind of meditative, doing the same thing all the time. There’s only one thing to do, and one way to do it. Clears the head. I’d go crazy if I had to do a bunch of office stuff and man the ventral cannons on top of it.” Stormtroopers weren’t supposed to know words like _meditative_, strictly speaking, but FN-2187 was good company so Mitaka didn’t mind that he probably illegally downloaded a library’s worth of holo-books and read them on his helmet display whilst mopping the floor or disinfecting toilets.

“Two chances in ten of getting sick leave is better than none, right?” Mitaka nervously asked FN-2187, taking off his cap and twisting it.

“I dunno,” FN-2187 replied. “It’s your time, it’s your risk. And there’s no telling how Hux will take it. Maybe he’ll think you’re slacking.”

“I’m NOT!” Mitaka was incensed. “I’m actually going mad here. What’s the worst they would do to me if I just refused to take my bridge shift, for once?”

He could hear the snort even through the vocoder. “That’s adorable. We’d probably shoot you,” FN-2187 replied.

“We? Who is this _We_? Why would you take their side?”

“If you’re going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?” FN-2187 retorted.

Mitaka took a few steps back. “Don’t show Hux the medbay stuff,” FN-2187 quickly advised him. “It won’t get you anything and it’ll just look bad. But you didn’t go and get questioned and stuck with needles for nothing, you know.”

“What?”

“The next time you get a bad performance evaluation, show them the papers. Say it’s a kriffing, Force-damned miracle they could get any work out of you at all, what with you having clinical anxiety and depression. That should shut them up and keep your demerit levels to medium.”

Mitaka wished he’d taken FN-2187’s advice after the fact. The man was objectively the best sniper and the worst soldier the Order had, and if he could talk back, creatively interpret orders, run his little schemes and survive, then he knew what he was about when dealing with the top brass. But the remark about Mitaka getting shot still rankled. Then, he remembered that there was a death this week. An unremarkable bridge officer was found dead with a slit throat. The Captain had been stripped to his underclothes, tied to his chair, and left on the bridge. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were dull, glassy marbles. He was as stiff as a mannequin.

This event was not called murder. It was left uninvestigated. From the horrified whispers of his co-workers, Mitaka had pieced together the circumstances that led to this. Captain Qantis had “taken liberties” with some of the stormtroopers, using their expendability for his own gain. When Hux asked Phasma if she knew anything about this untimely death, all she said was: “Somebody took out the trash around here.” Hux looked disgusted, and ordered a squad to take the body away. They did, and from the corner of his eye Mitaka could see one of the stormtroopers place a hand on the shoulder of another for a fraction of a second, taking it away before the more senior staff could take notice.

With the helmets and their stony quiet, Mitaka couldn’t identify them. He hoped FN-2187 was well out of that unthinkable mess, and that none of it had happened to anybody he knew. He couldn’t blame FN-2187 for picking his own side, should it come down to it. Before he could stop himself, he started to ask that impassive mask: “Have you heard anything about…”, and then trailed off. Some questions were not meant to be asked or answered.

“Have I heard anything about what?” FN-2187 wouldn’t let this one go. Mitaka could sense that they were approaching the socially acceptable time limit for friendly conversation between troopers and officers, and FN-2187 knew it too.

“The new Resistance prisoner. The pilot. Have you seen him? What’s he like? Is he breaking? Do you think he has the map?” He was desperately trying to change the subject to safer territory.

“I think I caught a glimpse of him on Jakku. Handsome devil. I don’t know what happened to him afterwards. If that poor bugger is getting torn open by Ren, then I don’t think he’s got much of a chance. Like, one in ten. If he’s lucky.”

Here, Mitaka could be useful. “I think they’ve got him locked up in Detention Block 50A”, he said. “Maximum security. And I think Ren did go in for him.”

“Yikes.”

They shared an unofficial moment of silence for Resistance Scum. Even they didn’t deserve that.

“I should go soon,” FN-2187 said quickly. Too quickly. Mitaka should have guessed that he’d run for Detention Block 50A and do what every First Order soldier secretly fantasized about; rescue someone. Poor FN-2187 had gone properly crazy. Only someone irrevocably broken down by military conditioning from childhood and the terrible glory of the battlefield could do such a good job at pretending to be sane for so long.

**Author's Note:**

> The "mention of sexual abuse" is a mention of something that happens off-screen, and not to any named characters in this fic. The abuser is also killed.


End file.
